Posts Tagged ‘workforce’

Recorded live at VETS 26 in New Orleans, this episode features Tiphanie Forst, Founder & CEO of Frigata Health Strategies and a Principal at Deep Water Point. With 24 years across clinical, pharmaceutical, and healthcare IT — the past 20 focused on Military Health System modernization for the DoD and VA — Tiphanie has built…

Kylie Diaz, VP of Community Engagement at Visit St. Pete Clearwater, brings a refreshingly mission-driven perspective to this Destination Florida conversation. She oversees the DMO’s capital funding program, its chambers, and a partner base of roughly 4,000 — and she makes a compelling case for how tourism quietly powers a community. Pinellas County collects north…

Sandra Rios, PR and marketing manager for the Naples, Marco Island & Everglades CVB — a.k.a. Florida’s Paradise Coast — brings 25 years of hospitality experience (casinos, the Opal Collection, opening the Hard Rock guitar hotel) to a wide-ranging tour of Collier County’s three very different personalities. Naples is “unapologetically luxury”: quiet wealth, owner-owned boutiques…

Crystal River bills itself as the (copyright) Manatee Capital of the World, and marketing & content manager Nick Popham makes a strong case for why. A former TV reporter turned DMO storyteller, Nick walks host Larry Aldrich through what makes this stretch of Florida’s Nature Coast a genuine hidden gem: 72-degree spring water year-round, thousands…

Recorded live at VETS 26 in New Orleans, this episode features Cordell Rolle, founder of Rolle IT, a cybersecurity firm about seven years in that works primarily with the federal government and VA, plus B2B clients navigating the new CMMC regulations. Cordell’s origin story is the heart of the conversation: a Navy firefighter (damage controlman)…

Larry talks with Daniel Cohanpour, CEO of Trove Tourism Development Advisors, a New York agency that works exclusively with tourism boards and DMOs across marketing, research, and destination development. Daniel’s core message: the industry has changed more in the last six months than ever, and the destinations winning right now are the ones treating traveler…

Larry sits down with Brittany Kenner, marketing director for Murray, Kentucky — the self-proclaimed friendliest small town in America, home to Murray State University and a tourism office of exactly two people running the whole show. Brittany’s through-line is that a small budget and a small team aren’t a handicap so much as a forcing…

Recorded live from the Etourism Conference in Louisville, this one’s a fun reminder that the biggest travel trend of 2026 might be walking around on four legs. Coryn Briggs, Senior Director of Marketing at Traverse City Tourism, breaks down TripAdvisor’s “VIP Travel” trend — which turns out to mean Very Important Pets, not very important…

Larry catches up with Cristal Rodriguez, Director of Marketing at Tempe Tourism and a recent Marketer of the Year, for a conversation that covers solo travel, a rooftop renaissance, a 13-years-in-the-making rebrand, and the slightly terrifying reality of competing with ChatGPT for “best pizza in Tempe” searches. Cristal makes a strong case that Tempe isn’t…

Larry sits down with Daniel Horsch, Senior Sales Director at Azira, for a wide-ranging conversation about what data can actually do for destination marketers when you stop chasing impressions and start asking better questions. Daniel describes Azira as “the Swiss” of the data world — neutral, flexible, and plugged in across channel partners, agencies, and direct clients — with geolocation data that’s universal enough to translate across verticals but laser-focused on travel and hospitality. The bigger thread here is intentionality. Daniel makes the case that DMOs are getting pulled past the old “heads in beds” scoreboard and into harder questions: Are visitors actually shopping? Eating? Staying longer? Coming back? He shares a sharp example from his pre-Azira days running marketing for a DFW destination, where data showed a nearby high-affinity market was only staying 1.5 days — prompting a budget reallocation to longer-stay markets that drove real economic lift. He and Larry also riff on the realities of AI as a “coworker, not a captain,” the death of analysis paralysis, and why no Zoom call will ever replace a real conversation at an event. SPONSORED BY: ABOUT OUR GUEST: Daniel Horsch (LinkedIn)Sales Director, Azira, Inc. Daniel Horsch is a tourism sales and marketing pro—and proud dad—with 15 years in destination marketing, helping destinations generate real ROI through world-class data. As an account manager, he’s led teams of writers, designers, video editors, and photographers, and thrives in an…